Bringing your brand to life: How to humanise

At Together, we are all about digging deeper and getting under the skin of your brand. We don’t just think about branding, we go beyond the brief to look into the behavioural insight of your consumers and how to use this to create powerful experiences. The aim? To disrupt habits, change behaviours and leave a lasting impression. One way we do this is by bringing your brand to life. But what does this mean, and why is this important? Read on to find out.

Why Humanise Your Brand?

It’s no surprise that humans respond best to humans. So, a brand that’s ‘human’ in its nature is going to engage prospects more easily when trying to attract an audience. Here’s some of the ways you can do it.

Make Your Brand Personal

Make your brand personal by giving it more ‘human characteristics’. This can come from your brand’s chosen tone of voice and visual persona. Solidifying these key brand components effectively gives your brand a unique spin compared to what’s already on the market.

1. Creating A Voice

Give your brand a unique voice. Your tone of voice should be based on your target audience and what personas will resonate with them. The key thing to remember, having created your voice, is consistency - make note of your tone and what your brand would/wouldn’t say. If your target audience are sophisticated professionals, your tone of voice may be formal as this is what will resonate with them most. In this case, keeping things short, sharp and value-rich will respect their time and experience. However, if you have a younger audience and the product or service is something more fun, your tone of voice will be bouncy, chatty and friendly. You might have flex to bring in additional secondary values to add more character to your voice.

2. Share Your Story

Sharing your brand’s unique story with your audience will help them understand your journey on a deeper level. Like individuals, brands also have a backstory, a reason, and a purpose, all of which your audience will want to hear. Think of it like having a conversation with a new acquaintance. A powerful story can be the best way to help your audience engage with your brand. By sharing a story, you’re making your brand more transparent. This allows your audience to connect with you on a personal level; it shows you’re not just a commercial entity, but that your business has been on a journey, has values and thoughts just as a human does. If you’re after a quick win; on your website make sure you have a detailed ‘About Us’ page. This is a great way to share your story. Over on our own website we have a ‘Philosophy’ page; we use this to tell our audience about our values and who we are.

3. Build Relationships

Social media is the most effective way to build relationships with a larger audience. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram, build a community for your brand. The best way to make your brand feel more human is by simply thinking of your brand as a character and trying to make ‘friends’ on social media. Follow users and genuinely interact with them - this creates the feeling of familiarity you’re looking for. It also allows them to interact with you in a way that’s the same as how they interact with their family and friends online.

4. Thank Your Audience

Your business will (hopefully!) have achievements that you want to share on social media. But, remember to thank your audience and keep them involved. Not only will this make them feel welcomed but it builds mutual respect that users will want to stay loyal to. If you want to connect with your audience on the ‘human’ level, gratitude is a great place to start.

Share User-Generated Content (‘UGC’)

Share your audience's posts - whether it’s them using your product or service, or even just a lovely review, this helps build trust and loyalty with customers. To many consumers, brands are no longer trustworthy by default. Help your customers feel they can trust you by using others' posts to promote certain ‘trust signals’. Not only will this make the content creator feel great by having their post shared, but it also helps future prospects feel as though they’re in proven ‘safe hands’. UGC also promotes conversations between users and brands. You can then reply to these to trigger conversations, ultimately adding a more human element to your brand in the process.

Go Behind The Scenes (‘BTS’)

BTS will give your audience an insight into your brand. This is an amazing way to build a relationship with your audience. Talking about the culture of your brand makes an audience feel as if they really know you by helping them put a face to the brand. An easy way to make BTS content is to run a ‘meet the team series’. Not only will this provide insight into your brand, but this will also humanise your brand as you introduce your audience to the individuals behind the brand.

So many customers want to be able to connect with your brand on a human level, and sharing BTS photos and videos is a great way to facilitate this connection. As an example, head over to our Instagram page this is where we shall all our BTS and office culture posts to build a relationship with our audience.

Sharing Mistakes

Now, we know what you’re thinking; brands can’t share their mistakes, it will look bad! It’s right to be cautious, but mistakes being a ‘negative’ isn’t always the case.

Nowadays, any mistake a brand makes will be picked up by customers and online viewers in an instant. So, if you address it first, and then work to improve from it, people will respect your brand. This is simply a very human thing to do, and by acknowledging the mistakes, you’ll appear accountable, trustworthy, and mature. After all, acknowledging mistakes and attempting to resolve them is a hallmark of personal growth, so try to do this with your brand too. This will help your audience trust you, which brings us to the next point of psychological views…

BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE

If you’re wanting to dive deeper into humanising your brand, consider psychological components. Although you will have touched on this when researching your audience personas, we can always go further.

What is the main thing that your target customers value the most? Is it affordability, reliability, or maybe safety? You want to show your customers that your brand’s values and theirs align. As a simple example, if the main shared value is feeling safe, what elements or colours resemble safety to subconsciously enable the audience to feel ‘safe’ with your brand? The colour green is often associated with safety. Think about everyday use-cases like ‘Go’ signs, or even the fire exit signs that would guide you to safety. Doing this for your brand will arm your content team with insight to produce creative that incorporate your key values into compelling content.

Looking into psychological views and reflecting them in your brand will help bring your persona to life. With the power of psychology within your marketing, you can engage with your audience and build that relationship in a ‘human’ way. Behavioural science and insight is the key for us at Together. Take a look at our website for more behavioural science insights - we call it ‘BS’, but it’s far from that!

To Conclude:

Humanising your brand is just one of the many ways of building customer loyalty. It is, by far, one of the most powerful considerations for every organisation. ‘Humanising’ creates a brand that people are comfortable with - one that possesses a character they can relate to.

If you want your brand to grow and leave a lasting impact, it’s time to consider giving it that personality your audience can connect with. If you want to take your brand to the next level, contact us today, we’d love to be part of it.

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